The Ten Essentials of Sun Tzu

A synthesis of the Art of War – Griffith Version

 

War is a grave concern of the state; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is pertinent that it be thoroughly studied.

Victory is the object of war. The victorious situation is the product of the skillful commanders creative imagination. While we have a blundering swiftness of war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged; supernatural speed is the essence of war.

To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. Supreme excellence in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy. His primary target is the mind of the opposing commander. Therefore, “know thy enemy and know thy self and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

Invincibility lies in defense while the possibility of victory is in the attack. No war can be won by adapting a static position. A victory gained before the situation has crystallized is the acme of skill. Therefore, the skillful commander takes up a position in which he cannot be defeated and misses no opportunity to master his enemy. In planning, never a useless move; in strategy, no step taken in vain. Never loss the initiative.

The management of many is the same as management of few. Experts in war depend especially on the rules of opportunity and expediency. Therefore, a skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates. Thus, we use the Normal force to engage, while we make use of Extraordinary force to win.

Determine the enemy’s plans. Agitate and probe him to ascertain his movement and know his strength. Avoiding to be shaped by his opponent, when a victory is won the skillful commander does not repeat his tactics but respond to circumstance in an infinite number of ways. As water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver – to make the most devious the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage. The art of maneuver is the skill of the Direct and Indirect; then cheng (orthodox) and chi (unorthodox).  Maneuver can be managed by the use of local guides.

Now the reason the enlightened prince and then wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievement surpass those of ordinary men is Foreknowledge. The skillful commander is always one step of ahead of his opponent.

An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes the emptiness of the enemy. And as water shapes its flow in accordance with the ground, so an army manages its victory in accordance with then situation of the enemy. And as water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.

The first essential of military operations is to preserve one’s own forces and annihilate the enemy and to attain this end it is necessary to avoid all passive and inflexible methods. No war can be won by adoption of a static attitude. Just as water adapts itself to the conformation of the ground, so in war one must be flexible; he must often adapt his tactics to the enemy situation.